PHOENIX -- An alert patrol officer is credited with finding a young boy who was kidnapped from an east Phoenix apartment complex Friday.
Phoenix Police Department spokesperson Andy Hill said the 3-year-old boy was reported missing from a complex near 32nd Street and Indian School Road around 6:30 p.m.
Hill said the boy was playing with several other children outside of his apartment in a grassy courtyard area.
The boy's mother was inside the apartment cooking dinner, and when she went to check on the boy he was not there.
"I could hear him, I could see him, everything was OK at first," said the boy's mother, Hillary Wood. "I peeked outside and he was just gone, nowhere to be found."
Wood says her 3-year-old son, Dayton, has several friends he plays with in a grassy area steps outside the family's front door.
"He knows not to go in the street or anywhere, so I walked outside, walked up and down the area and I started screaming his name," said Wood.
According to Hill, the other children told the boy's mother he had left the area with another adult. Investigators and Wood say the suspect used candy to lure the boy away from the complex.
"I just started thinking, this is not happening, this is not happening. I more or less panicked," said Wood.
After searching the area for several minutes, the Wood called 9-1-1.
Phoenix Officer Scott Holloway arrived at the complex within a minute and provided a description of the boy to officers in the nearby area.
After 35 minutes of searching, a second Phoenix Officer, Brian Webster, spotted the child in a shopping center just a couple of blocks away, walking with the female suspect.
"I had been looking and shined my light and you turn around and there they are. It was disbelief, surprise and of course relief," said Webster.
Webster was reportedly joined by other officers and they took 50-year-old Ronda Williams into custody. Williams was booked into jail on custodial interference charges.
Holloway described the moment when he told the boy's mother he had been found.
"She was convinced that she was never going to see her child again and for me to be able to tell her that not only had the child been found, but the child was fine, it was one of the highlights of my career," he said.
According to Hill, the victim's family did not know Williams, but they lived in the same Phoenix apartment complex.
Officials say the Phoenix Police Department Family Investigations Bureau is continuing to investigate the incident.
"They (police officers) were amazing, they were just amazing. They did everything, they were really on top of it," said Wood.
The Phoenix mom said she now hopes others will learn from her terrifying ordeal by teaching their children about "stranger danger."
